KALAMAZOO -- Tuesday afternoon, Marty DeJong was working on a home project that had been put off for quite a while.

He was piling dirt in a hole along the driveway, where a basketball hoop once stood.

"I do have a list," said DeJong's smiling wife, Alice. "(The basketball hoop) has been on my list for a couple years."

All of a sudden, Marty DeJong will have some time to attack that "Honey-Do" list. He has announced his retirement as Kalamazoo Christian's softball coach after 15 highly successful seasons that included six state championships.

Marty DeJong

"I like to garden, working with flowers and stuff, and it's June before I can do that," he said. "Everything feels rushed to get done, and I'm pushing 60 now. I'm more tired this year, and every year for the last three or four, than I've been the years before."

DeJong, who works in human resources at Allied Mechanical Services, will turn 59 on July 29. He moved to the U.S. from the Netherlands at age 4. He became the Comets' softball coach during his youngest child, Keri's, freshman year at K-Christian.

The next season, Keri DeJong pitched the Comets to the first of their five straight state titles -- two in Class C and three in Division 3. Marty DeJong carries that 1996 state crown as one of his more memorable highlights.

"Well, you have to consider the first state championship, when your own daughter's pitching," he said.

"But I think the fact that the kids were so enthusiastic, year after year after year, to play (was a highlight for him)."

DeJong, who played basketball and baseball at K-Christian -- "my dad was a real soccer buff; he wasn't crazy about baseball, but soccer wasn't real big over here (in the U.S.)" -- and graduated from the school in 1968.

A 2005 inductee in the Michigan High School Softball Coaches Association Hall of Fame, DeJong finishes his career with a 449-125 record, including a 32-9 mark this year.

"On the surface, you say, 'What an awesome coach,'" said K-Christian athletic director Jerry Weesies, who has not posted the coaching position yet but hopes to have a replacement lined up in early October.

"I think he changed the culture of softball in the area and state. When he started this small-ball, slap-and-bunt kind of stuff, the term 'Marty Ball' really became popular. But, even beyond that, every year he developed some of the best relationships with kids that I've ever seen."

Katie Dwyer, a four-year starter for DeJong who was first-team all-state the past two seasons, said she entered the Comets program with a bit of hesitation. She was concerned about living up to the level at which DeJong had built the program. She said his philosophy was "if we make the other team make plays, we're going to have a lot of success."

"I think mentally, he's always so level-headed," Dwyer said. "He always stayed kind of level for us. Even when we got really excited, really emotional, he'd always be there for us, in the middle."

Tom Hamilton, former Portage Northern coach who entered the MHSSCA Hall of Fame the same year as DeJong, said the K-Christian coach was a key cog in getting prep softball players to wear protective cages on their batting helmets and masks on the infield.

"He just helped bring softball two or three levels higher than what it was around here," Hamilton said.

"What was always so fun about coaching against Marty, you never knew what he was going to do. You just never knew what he might do, and his kids were always well-versed. You really had to be on your toes when you played Marty."

DeJong said he's been telling Weesies for the past four years: Whenever you get somebody in mind, I'd be willing to step down.

"I felt like I brought something to the table for the kids," DeJong said, "and we had a lot of kids who were just hungry to learn more and win."